5 Kickstarter Mistakes You Should Avoid

1. Putting “You” First.

Ironically, although we live in a highly individualistic and egocentric society, the individuals that prosper most economically are those that put other’s needs, wants, and desires before their own. You think I’m joking?

Pick out a problem, need, or want that everyone faces. Let’s say the desire that most people have to feel like they can reach their potential and be in control of their own life. Now, imagine an author that writes a book that inspires millions of individuals to take action and strive to live out their dreams. From having read this imaginary book, people end up having a better quality life, are grateful, and are more than willing to pay another $10 for their next book, or even recommend the book to a friend.

Although the author invested time and energy into producing the book, it is only after it has become helpful for another, that he or she prospers. By making your primary motivation to add value to other people’s lives, you will receive dividends well into the future.

Instead of senselessly promoting your project to bloggers, twitter accounts, on forums, and to your social network, first seek to understand the person you would like to support your project, then state the clear benefits to that individual, and finally, go to your full lengths to help the individual before asking something of them.

For example, I get a lot of requests from people who would like me to promote their project on twitter/facebook or to do an interview. I am far more likely to do so if the person states the message as follows:

“Hi Sal- I really enjoy your content at CrowdCrux. I’m doing a film project on Kickstarter and we have seen some traction and I was wondering if you could check it out. I have a really compelling story behind this project (enter how the project came to be). I’ve also learned a tremendous amount from doing this project and think it could be great to share these tips with your readers. I realize that you are very busy, but if you have the time to do a quick interview, we would be extremely grateful and promote it on our website, twitter, facebook, and more. Great work on the blog and keep it up!”

Now, that’s an extremely flattering message and makes me almost feel compelled to interview the person. They are a fan, understand that I try to provide great crowdfunding tips for people looking to do a campaign, and realize that I am also looking to grow my subscriber base and could benefit from the fact that they are willing to promote the article.

Clearly, this person took the time to understand my motivations and crafted the message in a way that giving them an interview would benefit me. Not only would I likely do an interview for this person, but I might even consider pledging for their campaign.

The next time you are going to put your self-interest first, stop, think about the interests guiding the person you are attempting to persuade, and then work from their interests back to yours. I really recommend the bestselling book How To Win Friends and Influence People. You can probably find it somewhere online for free if you look hard enough.

2. Poor Budgeting

There is nothing less satisfying than putting all your effort into a campaign only to have to end up owing money after filling all of your orders because you didn’t not budget carefully enough. I have seen it happen, and believe me, you do not want to be in this position.

I would recommend calculating in a buffer for your campaign of at least 10% to compensate for miscellaneous costs, especially if manufacturing and shipping is involved. A good number of campaigns I have read about must sacrifice their profit margins due to costs. Don’t let this be you!

3. Failure to Study Industry Examples

If you are going to write a book in a certain genre, you read books in that genre ahead of time. If you are going to create a business, you look at other businesses in your industry to see how they obtain customers, phrase marketing messages, and what their value proposition is. Even a quick glance at similar crowdfunding campaigns in your Kickstarter Category can help you craft a better video, call to action, or structure more meaningful reward tiers.

4. Underestimating Social Media Preparation

Unless you already have a large established audience, you need to be revving up your social media campaign (twitter/fb/google+/pinterest/LinkedIn) a minimum of three months before your campaign. It needs to take the place of a part-time job, meaning at least 2 hours per day spent on social media six days a week. This includes posting, following, sharing, and building relationships.

Until relatively recently, the only way to secure new business was to attend networking events, make use of paid advertisements, or get referrals from friends or past clients. Now, you have the entire world at your fingertips. Take some time to learn more about how to use twitter to market your campaign. This infographic is a year old from the time of writing, but you get the idea:

5. Expecting High Conversions

If you are familiar with sales and marketing, you can skip this bullet point, but otherwise check out the diagram below.

Essentially, for your Kickstarter campaign, the “marketing campaign” block will be comprised of: twitter/fb/pinterest/linkedin/g+/forum marketing, any news coverage you may receive, people that check you out from networking events, and any individuals that may find you on the Kickstarter website. Referrals includes individuals who pledge to your campaign because they saw that their friend pledged or their friend told them what an awesome campaign you have!

As you can see, despite expending a large amount of effort getting the word out, you can only expect a small number of individuals to pledge. Depending on the campaign, I’d say you can expect a .05% – 5% conversion rate overall (different reward categories will likely have different conversion rates). What is a conversion rate? If 100 people view your campaign page and 1 person pledges $30 for the reward tier where you actually receive the product and 5 people pledge $5 as a “supporter,” the product reward tier has a 1% conversion rate and the supporter tier has a 5% conversion rate.

Share:

I am hooked on your blog, great advice, seriously. I am big fan of “Think and Grow Rich” and “How to win and influence people”, those books changed my life. Thanks for posting this article. Time to read another post.

NewEra CreativeSpace

thanks for the post. Please help us promote our project to open a creative educational center at tinyurl.com/necspace

I’ve been reading your articles since joining the Game Developers on Kickstarter group on Linked in. We realized right out of the gate that point #2 would be a huge issue, especially since you are trying to calculate a moving target. The more you are able to fund, the more Kickstarter and Amazon Payments takes.

With this in mind, we put together an equation that we think works well, but would appreciate it if you could look at it and let us know if we need to build in more of a buffer.

I think that if a creator is fairly meticulous about anticipating costs (having started four businesses between us, my wife and I are pretty confident we know what we’re looking at) that this equation should work fine. If a creator tends to shoot from the hip, however, I expect that they might easily underestimate their product cost.

Give it a look and see what you think. If you’ve seen other systems for determining the minimum funding, please drop them in the comments as well.

Hi Chris- my only source of confusion is the 2,722 units you say are needed to cover costs does not meet the 5000 unit requirement for the 20k price the book manufacturer quoted, which might mean he would charge a higher price for the 2,722 and if you set your goal on that price, it might screw things up. However, this is obviously just an example. I like the article and would be happy to share on the twitter and Facebook later today.

http://aithene.net/ Aithene / Chris Wilson

Good to know its a point of confusion. I’ll see if I can find a way to clear it up in the article.

I also realize I didn’t note specifically (though it is alluded to in the article) that this equation was created for our use case, which is that the product we’re developing deals w/ minimum order runs from certain manufacturers. So, this equation is built specifically around the idea that we have to meet a minimum requirement. This is not the case for everyone, and I’ll need to point that out.

For the example in the article, the minimum run is 5000 books. This could be just what he wants, or it may be a minimum run he wants to hit to get a particular price point from the printer.

The point to keep in mind is that with this example, the profit that has been added onto the book means that 2722 units is the bare minimum needed at an $18 selling price to fund the production of 5000. As long as he sells the minimum 2722 books, he’s going to be able to pay for a shipment of 5000. But its the break-even point. Book #2723 is the first book he’d see any profit on. In fact, since the first 2722 books paid for the order, the remaining 2278 books should be all profit. Furthermore, however many of those don’t sell during the campaign he can sell any way and for however much he wants to.

You can use the equation to explore different selling prices. Raise and lower the price (P) and watch the equation always tells you how many units you’d have to sell at that price to fund the minimum requirement.

I hope that this clears things up.

CrowdCrux

Thanks for taking the time to put the equation together. It’s a great asset for other campaign owners going through a similar process.

Hi Shannan- I can’t advise without knowing your campaign in-depth, but as a rule of thumb, you should strive to raise 25-30% of your fundraising goal in your first week. Also, you should always ask for the minimum amount you need to make the project happen and can raise more if you go over your funding goal.

Mikhail

Hi Sal.

I have started my kickstarter backwards and followed the mistakes guide rather than tips for success. First I made my kickstarter project and then tried to guess to figure out why I’m not getting any backers. I decided to research on how to even go about having a successful project and wanted to thank you for opening my eyes. It’s not that I am selfish and want to just get funds without helping people, I was just so confused to this whole crowd-funding scene and how it operates. I am planning many more kickstarter projects as my father is an inventor with over a 100 patents with most inventions targeted to help people improve their lives so I will surely keep reading your blog.

Best regards,

Mikhail

CrowdCrux

Hi Mikhail,

“Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall.”

Glad you’re planning to do more campaigns and will learn from this one!

Bryce Lien

Mikhail,
I could have been reading my post there. I think for a lot of us independent product developers, we have the right intent, but lack the knowledge of these channels. I plan to do more campaigns as well, but see there is a lot to learn here before we do this again. I am grateful to Sal as he has a lot of good information here, and we will continue to pour through it as fast as we can, as our campaign continues. I truly believe this is the way of the future for bringing innovative ideas into reality.
Best of luck to you.
Bryce

Ira Caplan

Hi Sal, thank you for Crowdcrux.com and its articles. Finding this level of crowd-funding insight, communicated in a down-to-earth, easy to follow format (and, in this article, the infographic) is a huge lifeline that just got me climbing mountains again when I was ready to give up on foothills. I’m running my first campaign — a non profit ecologic and social innovation — ecommunity, recycling electronics while employing the special needs population. Using CrowdCrux’s many measuring tools for where we need to improve (and even a couple of things we’re doing right :)) is keeping me in the game. One crowd-funding strength I think ecommunity and our campaign bring to the table is we’re addressing 2 needs that every country in the world has — the ecological imperative to recycle electronics (otherwise toxic) in a compliant manner, and steering the special needs community from dependence to independence (which can save up to $3 million per individual per lifetime in otherwise pressing assisted living costs). I love the idea of sparing good people money, time and aggravation by being smarter and more compassionate with otherwise unseen resources. Having said this, I find myself working in way more areas than I thought I would be to build a bridge from ecommunity’s main facility in Misgav Industrial Park, Israel to the rest of the world. Most people that hear about ecommunity resonate with it immediately; winning their involvement…I haven’t figured this out yet. With all the valuable resources you’ve provided us here, I’m hard pressed to ask you for individual attention. However, I’d be thrilled to have you visit our campaign and hope we have something here that qualifies for additional attention from you and your crowd-funding colleagues. Either way, thank you so much for all you’re doing; I’ve begun sharing Crowd Crux with my colleagues and intend to continue (why wouldn’t I let my teammates know about this awesome platform that can helps us chart a brave new world?!) Very best to you and yours! (Oh, yeah, here’s our campaign: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ecommunity-s-first-indiegogo-campaign/x/2461066) Your newest fan, Ira Caplan, ecommunity U.S. liaison

CrowdCrux

Let me know if you have any question about nonprofit marketing or fundraising. Sorry to see you didn’t meet your goal, but would like to stay in touch

Johnny Han

If you’re a scifi junkie and want to be part of a scifi film done right, than visit our Indiegogo page. We have an ensemble crew who’ve worked on a number of Hollywood films like Man with the iron fist. Our perks start from as low as $10. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to have your name in the credits of an awesome film you can brag about to your friends. Please take the time to have a look, you won’t regret it.

This comment is not at all relevant to the article. I don’t mean to be rude, but this comment is a good example of mistake #1. Don’t paste your message across blogs and forums. It’s like popups. People will ignore you. Engage in the community first!

Johnny Han

Noted. Lesson learnt.

Bryan Wong

This is my first time raising funds for a project via Indiegogo and this article really open up my perspective to where I was heading in my first draft (Wrong direction!). I have made the changes and hope to connect with people more now. 2 hours (minimum) per day. Looking forward to connect with you guys!

CrowdCrux

Let me know if your revamp has a positive effect on your campaign :). What was your biggest change?

Bryan Wong

Previously, I was emphasizing how their funds can help my project kickstart rather than how my platform can benefit them. So, I did this change. However, there seems to have little impact though. I guess its the lacking of marketing / promotion.

I thought I was giving a very good rate for $1000 for a similar web platform that I built. No response still.

CrowdCrux

What’s the link to your campaign? I’ve noticed that software tends to be difficult to crowdfund. I think this will change once equity crowdfunding is put into effect in the spring.

Bryan Wong

Really appreciate your help. It would be great to list some of the mistakes I have! =)

I would ask someone to help with your english or do a better grammar/spell check. I would also be clearer with regards to how the funds will be used. Marketing is a broad term.

Bryan Wong

It seems like language is a problem. Initially, I thought it would be better to engage those professional service to help broadcast the fund raising.

Bryan Wong

You mean giving equity as part of their donation? How does that work and how much to give would work?

CrowdCrux

Equity crowdfunding is not yet legal, but will be in the spring (every day americans will be able to pledge small amounts and in exchange receive equity in a company).

Bryan Wong

That’s cool! Are there any leads for that now?

David Delamare

Great article Sal! And thanks, especially, for addressing the budgeting. We read a lot of articles leading up to our Alice in Wonderland book campaign at http://kck.st/IKyphL. Virtually none of them discussed this and it’s a huge issue. Creators need to think about fees but also about taxes. (We deal in inventory (prints, books etc.) and we can’t write off inventory-related expense until the inventory is sold. Sometimes it takes years for us to take the deduction. We were seriously tempted to lower our goal because we just didn’t think it would be possible to raise $35,000 in 32 days. But we realized that it would be better to earn nothing than to end up with an amount that wouldn’t allow us to do the job right. As it turned out, we were very fortunate and raised the entire amount in 2-1/2 days. We’re so relieved that we didn’t kid ourselves and go for less than we needed. –Best wishes, Wendy & David

Deana Hensley

Sal, I am fortunate to have come across your page! I am not promoting an idea, I am crowdfunding for a project to help my mother. You have alot of information here an it is very appreciated! I am hoping this will work for me though I am not very skilled in this computer marketing world. Following your page will give me some good insight. Thank you. I heard of the equity funding and will be watching for information regarding do’s / don’ts when it is legal and up n running!

CrowdCrux

How did your project go?

Randy

I’m crowdfunding on indiegogo to start a 3D Printing company aimed at Cosplayers, and creating a marketplace for everyone to share and profit off their ideas! I’m glad I came across your page, this information could prove invaluable.

Definitely! We also have a new Indiegogo section on our forum http://www.kickstarterforum.org (need to scroll down). I’ll be answering questions and providing feedback there for the next two weeks.

TagTalk

Thanks Sal! This article made some solid points and provided practical suggestions in avoiding pitfalls.

TagTalk is Kickstartering paper gift tags and greeting cards that can carry personalized interactive greetings for the gift senders. 3 weeks after launching the campaign at http://kck.st/QlueNt, we can definitely related to a few things listed here.

1. I think we did an OK job in putting “backers” and the benefits they can get at first. Our focus was always to educate them why our products can perfect your gifting/greeting experience. But it was how we put it that became our first problem.

People we pitched to seemed to get the “effect” pretty quickly. Yet at the beginning, some of them are having a hard time in understanding TagTalk is a “tag/card” + “app” idea instead of a hardware- or software-only one, until we showed them in person. So we revised our marketing and added visual aids such as info graph and product pictures.

By the end of first week, we got a coverage from the BackerJack with the comment – “It’s hard not to get ideas of how to use these tags to surprise friends and loved ones.”

Glad the article is helpful! Thanks for sharing some of your own thoughts/tips

Andrew James Mitchell

It’s always good to have a refresher on the win-win. You always have to make sure you’re coming from a place of giving. You know they’ll love your product or in my case film, it’s that passion and conviction that has to come though.

Great read, especially since this is my 1st time dabbling in indiegogo. Thanks Sal!

CrowdCrux

Welcome! Definitely agree about the passion and conviction piece.

Ray Austin

Hey Sal. First awesome article. Very helpful. I’m a former pro football guy, and doing something pretty darn big, and even with my twitter and Facebook following my backers are pretty low. I’m wondering if it’s the way I’m asking for help or people just not interested in the project. I’d really appreciate you taking the time to check it out and see where I can start getting a fire under it. My project is here, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1131245172/snapcount and if you don’t look at it or not, I’m posting this article on my tweeter and FB, because I know a lot of peeps waiting to see how my project goes and are gonna want help. Thanks again bro.

CrowdCrux

Glad the article is helpful. What kind of video view percentage are you getting? How many plays?

Not much. I may have shot myself in the foot with such a high fund. Any suggestions?

BJP

Hi Sal,
Thank you for the article. I am working on a campaign to help cover my expenses for a year as I serve as an unpaid prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney’s Office – a job I am taking (and moving for) because this location prosecutes a lot of the child exploitation (child pornography) cases, a cause I have been passionate about for as long as I can remember (over 20 years).
But other than trying to help save future children from these predators, I am not sure how best to explain the benefits to the people I am going to try to reach. Maybe it seems too self-explanatory to me because I have been involved in working toward this goal for so long, but it isn’t like “why this watch is better than all others on the market and will help you save precious time as an organizer so you can have more free time to do what you love” type of funding.
My other concern is the lack of relevant “perks” – I can’t offer free tickets to a production, or a first chance to own a product I am developing. And to spend a lot of money on perks seems counter-intuitive (do people really care about having a button or plastic wristband? I am not sure). I have thought of offering those, since they can be purchased relatively cheaply, but I don’t know what I can offer to larger donors.
I am about to start it, but I want to do it well, so any suggestions you might have on how to be successful on a more “community-benefit” type of campaign I would greatly appreciate.
Thank you.

Hey Sal, my name is Derrick thank you for providing this type of content and it looks like you have a ton more to help with my kickstarter. I am the creator of The Chameleon case you can check us out @ http://www.thechameleoncase.com these case change color based on touch and variation in temperature through the use of thermochromic particles. I have a patent and wish to utilize kickstarter to secure injection molds for the product so it can be mass produced. Everyone I show The Chameleon Case to wants one and it has been clear that I can not continue to keep up with demand making these by hand. I have many questions, even though I feel the product is amazing I know it is 10% product 90% marketing. One question I have is should I promote my kickstarter before hand? I worry that if I promote to early that people may lose interest or will not have that first impulse to go pledge. Furthermore, I can see that the majority of kickstarter pledges are from avid kickstarters how do I tap into this community. Also I know I will have many people wanting to pledge to my kickstarter, who do not have a KS account how would you recommend, compose a call to action that not only separates a person from their hard earned money but makes them do several steps that it takes to create a kickstarter account and then pledge. Idk how quickly you reply to post but please do as soon as you can I would love an opportunity to pick your brain some more if you would let me whereas I want everyone to be able to experience the uniqueness that is The Chameleon Case.

Thanks for your information. I am frankly a novice at internet marketing, including social media. So I appreciate good information. I just launched my first crowdfunding campaign at http://bit.ly/1lluAjn. Getting noticed seems to be a full-time job in itself. I wish I had someone I could pay on a commission basis to do promotion, rather than paying money up front. I wonder if that is a realistic desire. I would really like to hear from anyone who has been able to find such a service.

I’ve been using twitter to advertise my kickstarter: kck.st/1lSpuXC but to no success. I managed to build up a very small audience of around 80 but as I posted updates of my kickstarter I noticed that all the people that watched be began to drop off like flies. Now I’m down to 72. I just pretty much gave up on twitter because of that. It seemed like a bad place to advertise unless you truly had fans that enjoyed your work. It also seems like a lot of people will just follow you because they want to be followed back after which they unfollow you once you’ve followed them.

Let’s just say I’ve had a bad experience with Twitter lol.

CrowdCrux

Yea, twitter can be a difficult animal. It also takes a while to build up a following (3-6 months) and paid advertising to build up a following is not a sustainable solution.

I use Buffer (can also use hootsuite) to track the traffic from social media. You could also use your kickstarter short-link and add a + at the end of the link to get the bitly link’s traffic breakdown.

Guest

Hi Sal, I’ve begun the work towards a campaign and have read hundreds of web pages, researched tons of campaigns and have been accumulating all the best-in-class info I can. 1 common thread is definitely about promoting the campaign via social media, just as you have also mentioned. But the reality, as 1 person commented in this thread, is that some of us do not have Twitter, Pinterest or Google+ accounts and starting them now just to build a following in the next 3 months doesn’t sound reasonable, meaning, that kind of ‘manufactured’ behaviour could backfire, as opposed to genuine online relationships that people have built (e.g. their facebook friends). In my case, and as with many, I think we have to pick and choose our battles. We all only have so many hours in a week to do our job, handle kids and put together our campaign. I think it may be better to blow off some marketing avenues if they cannot be done well (for me Pinterest, Google+ and maybe Twitter). So what are your thoughts on those people who do not have large followings outside FB (maybe a bit on Linkedin)? Where would time be best spent promoting? I feel I would be too scatterred and unfocused to try and tackle those other social networks. Thanks again for your blog. Greg. http://www.boardseat.com

Greg Silas

Hi Sal, I’ve begun the work towards a campaign and have read hundreds of web pages, researched tons of campaigns and have been accumulating all the best-in-class info I can. 1 common thread is definitely about promoting the campaign via social media, just as you have also mentioned. But the reality, as 1 person commented in this thread, is that some of us do not have Twitter, Pinterest or Google+ accounts and starting them now just to build a following in the next 3 months doesn’t sound reasonable, meaning, that kind of ‘manufactured’ behaviour could backfire, as opposed to genuine online relationships that people have built (e.g. their facebook friends). In my case, and as with many, I think we have to pick and choose our battles. We all only have so many hours in a week to do our job, handle kids and put together our campaign. I think it may be better to blow off some marketing avenues if they cannot be done well (for me Pinterest, Google+ and maybe Twitter). So what are your thoughts on those people who do not have large followings outside FB (maybe a bit on Linkedin)? Where would time be best spent promoting? I feel I would be too scatterred and unfocused to try and tackle those other social networks. Thanks again for your blog. Greg. http://www.boardseat.com

http://www.pathsource.com David

The frustrating thing for me has been social media… I’ve been reaching out to influencers in my space to see if I can get some buzz before the launch and have gotten little to no response. I think perhaps I’ll just do it again after I get the campaign going next week.

CrowdCrux

You could try getting a LinkedIn introduction to an influencer if you have a mutual connection?

http://lovecrafttales.com Sewer Hrehorowicz

Thanks for article. I realized that I really should be prepared better, before starting indiegogo campaign for my game. I trusted, that great and profesionally presented product will sell itself. I guess, I have to learn more. I’m making a lovecraftian computer game (http://lovecrafttales.com), and I worked about 1,5 year on that. I think that it’s pretty well done, but I have almost no exposure. There are companies that offer promoting indiegogo campaign and I’m considering to paying one of them. What do you think about such services?

CrowdCrux

I would google the names of the companies and trying to find reviews. There are a good number on KickstarterForum.org and CrowdfundingForum.com

http://lovecrafttales.com Sewer Hrehorowicz

Thanks. Looks like it didn’t help much (paying for promotion), but I already learned a lot during this campaign…

Pat Brandon

Thanks for the article! I would completely agree that building a social media following before your campaign goes live is very important. By spends a little bit on promoting posts and ads on Facebook you can easily grow your community. We have had success with our strategy, see it here: http://igg.me/at/witholive

CrowdCrux

Glad you’ve had some success! Happy the article was helpful.

http://www.wolffepack.com wolffepack

There is a huge amount of good business sense in this article. Thanks! But I have a question about the value of driving following on twitter. You can put lots of effort into driving numbers in a short space of time, but does that really result in Kickstarter pledges if they are low quality followers? And relative to getting into influential blogs and reviews (where people really take note) is twitter investment worthwhile? Very interested to hear your views since I’m on the flight path to my own campaign.

CrowdCrux

I’d say twitter is just one tool and it can be helpful for some categories more than others. A lot of journalists are on twitter, so you can also use this as a way to scout them out (combined with tools like BuzzSumo to find people writing about particular topics). I think building a quality following does take time, but if you’re going to turn your project into a business anyways if you are successful on Kickstarter, might as well start now!

http://www.wolffepack.com wolffepack

Thanks, Sal. That’s helpful and puts it in perspective. I’m going to sustain the effort on twitter for the long term but balance it with other channels.

Luke

How did I not hear of this blog sooner? I’ve been preparing for my Kickstarter for 4 months and just now came across this site and I’m launching in a week. Looks like I’ve got some serious reading to do for the next few days… Thanks for all your hard work and help!

Hi there, thanks so much for these points. It’s information like this
that is helping develop our indiegogo campaign. However, we have come
to a point where we are having a lot of trouble finding backers. We are
posting 2x day to facebook and twitter, and I’ve revamped the indiegogo
site to include pictures and videos of press we’ve gotten over the
years. We are an 8 year old restaurant that was featured on the Food
Network’s Diners Driveins and Dives, and we are trying to stay
independent (though have been approached by private investors for the
funding). At this point, we are opening a second location in a more downtown area
of Syracuse, NY, which will feature a stage for live music and a full
bar (in addition to the waffles we will serve throughout the day and
night, as per our style).

I’m wondering if you have any tips for
us- you seem really knowledgeable about all of this. We are trying to
increase the number or backers and get our campaign to a healthy spot,
contribution-wise. We are 9 days in and are at a 14% contribution.
Thanks!!

disqus_QYwGZYL7Ul

Hi there, thanks so much for these points. It’s information like this
that is helping develop our indiegogo campaign. However, we have come
to a point where we are having a lot of trouble finding backers. We are
posting 2x day to facebook and twitter, and I’ve revamped the indiegogo
site to include pictures and videos of press we’ve gotten over the
years. We are an 8 year old restaurant that was featured on the Food
Network’s Diners Driveins and Dives, and we are trying to stay
independent (though have been approached by private investors for the
funding). At this point, we are opening a second location in a more downtown area
of Syracuse, NY, which will feature a stage for live music and a full
bar (in addition to the waffles we will serve throughout the day and
night, as per our style).

I’m wondering if you have any tips for
us- you seem really knowledgeable about all of this. We are trying to
increase the number or backers and get our campaign to a healthy spot,
contribution-wise. We are 9 days in and are at a 14% contribution.
Thanks!!

http://www.ecoculturevillage.org/ T^Boan

I just started my first kickstarter, The 2015 Poster Calendar, and I can see that my next one will be after more research. Thanks for this article. My first kickstarter is just in time for the
new year! I will donate all profits to fund Ecoculture Village projects. PLEASE LIKE AND SHARE. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1773552796/the-2015-poster-calendar

Dp Deng

I spent over 3 months to kick off my Kickstarter project http://kck.st/1xvx4Bh . I still found it’s inadequate. I only had a small twitter followers and small facebook following. Before launching, I set up on Prefundia.com and PitchFuse.com, but got only about 12 followers there; I set up a website and did some facebook “like” campaign, and I got over 100 sign up on our website. I also got about 100 followers on Instagram. I’m in the middle of the campaign now, it’s at 40% of our goal. I think the initial 25% was due to effort of prelaunch. I will have to work hard for the next 60%. As a small company, it’s pretty hard to get any traction in the PR area without a big budget, it may take 3 years to grow organically.

Dominic Sunny Gomes

Here is my Indiegogo Compaign about a short animated video involving classical paintings

This info was helpful. Wish I saw this earlier in my Kickstarter campaign. I guess better late then never. I could have done a bit more outreach prior to actually launching the Kickstarter campaign. We have a campaign about making premium foam trays for storing your action figures.

Who is Behind CrowdCrux?

He is passionate about the crowdfunding industry and helping people reach their fundraising goals through behind-the-scenes interviews of successful crowdfunders, marketing tips, promotional resources, and more.